When modesty is the best policy.

• Position: Insurance industry - Statistical Data Included

After years of washouts, the Tar Heel insurance industry was due for a year it could call merely a wash. That's what it'll have when the ink dries on the books for 2000.

On one hand, auto insurers felt a crunch in March as the N.C. Supreme Court ordered the biggest premium refund ever, based on overcharges in 1995 and 1996. Insurers also agreed to cut rates and keep them there until this fall. "The refund will amount to $250 million, plus interest, and with the lower rates, the total should be $600 million," says Jim Long, insurance commissioner. "That's some real money."

That's good news for consumers and businesses that insure cars and trucks, but not so good for state auto insurers, who collected nearly $4 billion in premiums last year. It was the first time in seven years they'd been ordered to return premiums.

On the other hand, property-and-casualty insurers breathed easier as December closed out a catastrophe-free year. "Because we didn't have a hurricane, we didn't have the property losses we had the year before," says Long, re-elected in November to a fifth term. When claims for Hurricane Floyd were finally completed last year, they totaled $1.6 billion, eclipsing the $1.2 billion from Hurricane Fran in 1996. "Fortunately, none of our companies' reserves were really tested. After Hurricane Andrew in Florida, some of the companies there were left insolvent." That storm did $24 billion in damage in 1992.

While more-expensive homes and businesses meant larger policies, commissions were stagnant due to lower premiums. "The property-and-casualty market continues soft," says Robert Bird, executive vice president of Independent Insurance Agents of North Carolina in Raleigh. The 1,000 members of the trade group employ 10,000 people in the state.

While a setback for insurers, the auto-rate settlement could have been worse for their industry. Even while the rates for 1995 and 1996 were in dispute, the industry defied an N.C. Department of Insurance order to reduce them in 1997, raising them instead. The court decision in March allowed the industry to keep that increase, plus gains from a 1999 reduction that was less than Long ordered. Bottom line? Another wash -- a compromise in which insurers agreed to reduce rates an average of 9.3% at least through October.

Workers' compensation insurers also got good news, says Buck Lattimore, chairman of the N.C. Industrial Commission, which administers the program that covers Tar Heel employees on the...